


Advice Al Dente

by SailorSol



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Friendship, Interspecies Relationship(s), Lunch, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Other, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Relationship Advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 23:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2289386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan has a problem and Carmela offers her advice as BFF.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advice Al Dente

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightsMistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/gifts).



> I haven't read the books in ages, so sorry for any mis-characterizations. I hope you enjoy this!

Her phone vibrates in the middle of third period, and she sneaks a peek while Mr. Guttierez is fiddling with the hookup between his laptop and the projector.

_Lunch?_ is all it says, alongside a picture of a rather colorful macaw.

_Crossings in an hour?_ she texts back, and barely catches a confirmation before she has to shove her phone away before it can get confiscated.

* * *

 

Students aren’t supposed to leave school grounds during lunch, but it’s not as if Carmela will get caught coming or going. The bathroom in the girls’ locker room is always empty during that time of the day, so she slips inside a stall and pulls her phone out again. She’d convinced Dairi and Spot to give it an upgrade only a few weeks ago, but having the phone linked to the worldgate in her closet made life much easier for Carmela.

The Crossings are always busy, but Carmela has plenty of experience navigating them in all sorts of circumstances, so she winds her way through the crowds and heads for an out of the way restaurant that’s a close approximation (on a galactic scale) to a pub. It’s their typical meeting place, and when she gets there, she spots him easily.

Brooding in the corner, as always.

She throws herself into the seat across from him. “Dai,” she greets; if they were in an actual pub she probably wouldn’t be as polite. “New haircut?”

Ronan scowls, but she knows there’s no malice in it. “If you count having half my hair singed off by some… something, then yes. Dai,” he adds a moment later, because even grumpy wizards are unfailingly polite about that sort of thing.

“So, did you need something other than to bask in my presence?” Carmela asks, not even bothering to pick up the menu.

Ronan is quiet for a moment, and then he sighs, a long exhale that tells Carmela exactly what kind of mood he’s in. She wouldn’t be surprised if the ocean was doing weird things in Ireland right about now. “I have a… problem.”

Wizards were always careful with words. Calling it a problem meant that he truly thought it was a problem. “Girl, boy, non-gendered species from a far flung planet?” Carmela asks. “Or have you finally decided to let me take you clothes shopping?” She adds the last bit to goad him, and he rolls his eyes, but seems a little less tense, so she counts the victory.

“There’s a person,” he starts, and there again he uses the word _person_ very carefully, so Carmela gets the feeling this person isn’t from Earth and might not even be humanoid. “I met them while working.”

This is going to take longer than lunch, but Carmela has physics after lunch, and they’re doing a review for next week’s test that she really doesn’t need to study for, so she’s not too worried about skipping. “And I take it you felt something for them?”

He slumps in his seat as the octopus-like server brings them their regular orders. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Oh?” she prompted, taking a bite of her pizza-equivalent; they made the best dough here, light and fluffy and just a little chewy while still melting perfectly in your mouth. As a native New Yorker, Carmela had high standards for pizza.

“It was someone I think I recognized.”

“So you’ve met them before?”

He sighs, running a hand through his shorter-than-normal hair. He hasn’t touched his own food yet. “I don’t even know for sure if it’s who I thought it was.”

“Ronan, you know I’m not going to judge you on whoever or whatever this person is. You came to me for a reason, yeah? So spit it out already,” she says, abandoning her own food for the moment to lean forward and take one of his hands into her own.

He gives her a wry half-smile and shakes his head. “It was the One’s Champion.” She doesn’t say anything, because if anyone would recognize the One’s Champion, it was Ronan. Which also meant he had no doubt about whether he really recognized them or not. “I was acting as a mediator, and there was this servant. Nobody was paying him any attention, and I couldn’t understand why, at first.”

That didn’t really surprise Carmela at all; how many years had the One’s Champion disguised Itself as Tom and Carl’s pet bird? “So what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Ronan says sourly. “We finished the negotiations, and I came home.”

Now it was Carmela’s turn to sigh. She couldn’t begin to understand the relationship that Ronan had with the One’s Champion, and she’s not entirely sure she wants that level of understanding. He’d tried to explain it to her, after the mess with the Pullulus, that it felt like part of himself was missing now. “You’re hopeless, you know that?”

He gives her a pitiful look. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You could have at least talked to him,” she says.

“And said what? ‘Hi, I think you’re the avatar for the One’s Champion, who I’m more than a little bit in love with’? I don’t think he even knew yet.”

Carmela can’t help the snort of amusement. It had only taken Ronan nearly two years of living without the One’s Champion inside of him to finally admit that he was in love. “You could have just talked to him about life on his planet. Gotten to know him as a person independent of the One’s Champion, and then seen what happened from there.”

“I’m crap at this, ‘Mela, and we both know it. You know, it would be so much easier if I was still halfway in love with your brother and Nita.”

Carmela leans across the table and kisses Ronan on the cheek. “They love you too, you know, and I’m sure they’d understand if you just wanted comfort for a little while. But I personally think you’re being an idiot and you should have just talked to the guy.”

“I didn’t want to get to know him just because—”

“Then don’t,” she says, cutting him off. “You know better than anyone what he’s got to be going through. I’m not telling you to go seduce him or something just so you can get with the One’s Champion,” and isn’t that something she never thought she’d be saying, “but you can at least see if he’s someone you’d want to be friends with.”

Ronan is still slumped, still hasn’t touched his food, but Carmela can see that some of the tension has eased from his face. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I’m always right,” she says, and that finally gets something close to a real smile out of him. “Now eat your food and then we’ll go visit Sker’ret before I have to get back for trig.”

“Thanks,” he says. They spend the rest of their lunch talking about a new band Ronan’s going to see, and if Carmela gets back to school just as trig is ending, she doesn’t much mind.


End file.
